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Sunday, August 28, 2016

THE EPA IS A CESSPOOL OF CORRUPTION: THE GOLD KING MINE COVERUP

ABOVE, THE EPA "EDITED" FILM OF THE MOMENT THE COMPANY THEY HIRED FOR CLEANUP RELEASED THE WATER FROM THE GOLD KING MINE.

THE EPA WAS LATER BUSTED FOR BLEEPING OUT WHAT THE CONTRACTORS SAID.

THE AFTERMATH CAN BE SEEN BELOW FROM A FLYOVER VIDEO BY CNN, BUT THE REAL DAMAGE HAS ONLY RECENTLY BEEN UNCOVERED.

DAYS LATER, THE CONTRACTOR AND THE EPA WERE BOTH STILL LYING, AS CBS SHOWS IN THE VIDEO BELOW.

THE CONTRACTED COMPANY LIED ABOUT HOW MUCH WATER WAS RELEASED FROM THE MINE, KNEW THERE WAS A CONSTANT LEAK FROM THAT HOLE FOR MONTHS, AT LEAST, AND THE EPA WAS COMPLICIT IN THE INITIAL "REPORTING" OF THE PREVENTABLE DISASTER.

Environmental Restoration LLC was excavating the Gold King Mine in Colorado August 5, 2015 at the direction of EPA officials, which caused the flood of
toxic waste to poison drinking water for three states and into the Navajo
Nation of New Mexico and Arizona.

THE EPA AWARDED THAT COMPANY RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT SPILL ALMOST $3 MILLION.AWARDED IT FOR CONTAMINATING THE RIVERS IN 3 STATES AND THE NAVAJO NATION!WATER IS VERY SCARCE IN THIS AREA OF AMERICA, AND EVERY DROP IS VERY IMPORTANT TO RESIDENTS THERE.

IN ESSENCE, THE EPA PAID FOR THE POISONING OF THE DRINKING WATER, THE KILLING OF EVERYTHING IN EVERY RIVER AND STREAM AFFECTED BY THAT SPILL.

BUT THE EPA IS FUNDED BY CONGRESS, WHICH MEANS TAXPAYER DOLLARS, SO ALL OF US WHO PAY TAXES ARE PAYING FOR THIS....ALMOST $30 MILLION, SO FAR, AND THAT WAS EARLIER THIS YEAR, BEFORE THE NEW SPILL.

AND THE EPA ADMITS THAT IT DID AWARD THE COMPANY THAT CAUSED THIS ONGOING DISASTER.

The EPA internally acknowledged the award and crafted a response
to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) finding, according to emails obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act, but the response was never sent to the news
organization.“It just slipped through the cracks,” EPA spokeswoman
Melissa Harrison told TheDCNF 32 minutes after deadline. “It was a
mistake on our behalf.”

The EPA response uncovered by TheDCNF defended the funding by claiming
that the contractor was used for disaster assessments, rather than
cleanup.

“EPA’s decision to reward the firm involved in the Gold King
Mine disaster shows they’re more concerned about protecting themselves
and their friends than the environment,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and
founder of transparency group Open The Books, told TheDCNF Thursday.

TheDCNF asked the EPA to explain the awards and gave the agency the
opportunity to defend the funding. Agency officials responded internally
almost immediately, but never provided comment for TheDCNF’s story,
which was published nearly 39 hours later.

THEY HAD TIME TO MAKE THE NEWS DEADLINE AND CHOSE NOT TO.

“The EPA itself is a
Superfund site – sadly, it’s a cesspool of corruption, cronyism and
incompetence,” Andrzejewski said. “In the real world, poor performance
is punished but with the federal government it is too often tolerated
and applauded. The EPA is one of the worst offenders.”“I don’t have a response ready for you yet on ER LLC,” St. Clair
wrote in an email to TheDCNF. “I do think we’ll have solid answers to
your questions, including breakdowns of funding. Can you hold this story
off until we can get you something? Hopefully tonight/tomorrow am,
although with the holiday it may not be until Thurs. (I’ve been leaning
on people to get it to me tonight.)”

That message was sent at 5:29
p.m. – six hours after Ostrander’s email – and was the last
correspondence with TheDCNF regarding the story. TheDCNF held the story
for an extra day.

Sandoval responded to Ostrander at 8:21 p.m.
with a more thorough funding breakdown, but that was never sent to
TheDCNF. The article was published at 12:07 a.m. on Nov. 12.

The EPA also did not respond to requests for comment on its failure to respond.[This article first appeared on The Daily Caller.]

"Had it been done, the plan to open the mine would have
been revised, and the blowout would not have occurred," said the review,
which was requested by the EPA and performed by the Interior
Department's Bureau of Reclamation.FROM THE DENVER POST:Federal authorities have confirmed for the first time that a criminal investigation into the 2015 Gold King Mine spill is underway, saying their probe involves the U.S. Attorney’s Office and came at the request of members of Congress.Documents reviewed by The Denver Post on Monday indicate the probe has been in progress for nearly a year.Jeffrey Lagda, spokesman for the inspector general’s office, said the
OIG is working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office on the criminal
investigation. It was “based on requests from several members of the
House and Senate,” he added.

An agency spokeswoman said, “discharged water and solids that entered
Cement Creek had been treated with lime and consisted of precipitated
metals in the form of metal hydroxides which will quickly settle out of
the creek.” The whole incident lasted about 2 hours.

DARE WE IMAGINE HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE FOR THE TRUTH TO COME OUT ON THIS LATEST "ACCIDENT"?

ABOVE: A map of the Four Corners region of the Navajo lands affected by the Gold King Mine spill.Today, the reservation counts more than 300,000 people as residents, all dependent on the river water for everything.

From a spot near downtown Farmington, New Mexico, the San Juan meanders west into Navajo country.The dry, brown earth near the reservation’s eastern border washes into
thickets of piñon less than 50 miles south, which in turn wash into
mesas and brush clustered off the remote roads that connect these tribal
communities. The sky is a complement to Mother Earth, and the rivers
are the veins that sustain the Navajo Nation: the San Juan. The
Colorado. The Little Colorado. Over time, through generations, the water
has endured. It is sacred to the Navajo in a way the rest of America
perhaps cannot understand. It is the heart of a civilization.

The San Juan River is just one expression of both the past and the
future of the Navajo, a ribbon that ties people together through time.

By the evening of August 7, news of the spill had made its way across
the reservation. Over the next few days, folks visited the river. The
sludge that streamed through the Animas had now mixed with clear water
in the San Juan River, which transformed into a milky plume as it flowed
into Shiprock.

Almost immediately, the Navajo Nation shut off the two
irrigation systems that feed off the San Juan River. Severing that
lifeline for ranchers and farmers so deep into the summer was
disastrous.

Hay was being cut. Alfalfa had just been planted. Corn and
melons were already bursting from the land, a bounty that would usually
make its way to tables of families and neighbors and to be sold at
roadside stops on the reservation. But the San Juan was flowing with
aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, and other heavy metals. The
EPA warned people to stay away.

One hundred miles southwest of Shiprock, in the Navajo Nation capital of
Window Rock, Arizona, tribal president Russell Begaye and his staff
tried to grasp the scope of the disaster. “We are dealing with the
livelihood of our people,” Begaye says now, “but we don’t want to give
this land to our children and grandchildren because it’s tainted.”
Protecting the reservation was the top priority, but there wasn’t a
contingency plan for river contamination.

Three Navajos died by suicide in the month after the
spill, which Begaye blamed on the psychological effects of the Gold King
Mine blowout. The disaster contaminated the tribe’s mind, Begaye says,
and the lack of federal accountability only reinforced to the Navajo
that they are (at best) an afterthought.

BACK IN MAY, NEW MEXICO STARTED ITS LAWSUIT AGAINST THE EPA.THE
GOVERNOR HAD DECLARED A STATE OF EMERGENCY WHEN THE SPILL FIRST
HAPPENED, BUT NOTHING WOULD STOP THE POLLUTION FROM SPREADING AND
KILLING AND CAUSING UNTOLD SUFFERING.

In the weeks following the blowout, Governor John Hickenlooper also declared a disaster emergency in Colorado.But, as it turns out, government officials in Colorado may also have been complicit in all this.

Prior to mining in this area, the mineralized rocks were natural
sources of metals and acidity to streams. Historical mining also
contributed to the metals and acidity in streams of this area.

Multiple
USGS papers have been published about the environmental effects of
unmined mineralized areas and historical mine sites in the Animas River
watershed. These reports,
and the data contained therein, provide a critical environmental
baseline against which the effects of the Gold King Mine release can be
assessed. The locations, types of data, and frequency of data vary based
on the objectives of the USGS program or study for which they were
collected.

NO ONE KNOWS HOW LONG OR TO WHAT EXTENT THIS PREVENTABLE SPILL WILL AFFECT THE WATERWAYS IT CONTAMINATED.NO ONE KNOWS WHAT LONG-TERM EFFECTS IT WILL HAVE ON RIVER LIFE, ON THE LAND, ON THE PEOPLE, BUT WE DO KNOW THE POLLUTION LEVELS ARE STILL HIGH.

FROM UTAH, THIS REPORT IN JUNE OF THIS YEAR:

Update June 21, 2016Results of DEQ Water Quality Sampling during Spring Runoff.Flow in the San Juan Rivers is high due to spring runoff and
approached peak flow conditions on June 5th, 2016. DEQ has evaluated
weekly data collected during spring runoff for the months of February,
March, April, and the first week of June, 2016. These data were
screened against recreational, drinking water, agricultural, and aquatic
life criteria. Aluminum concentrations regularly exceed aquatic life
criteria at most locations for most sampling events. Total dissolved
solids was exceeded in most samples and molybdenum was exceeded once for
agricultural uses at the Montezuma Creek monitoring location.

THE EPA HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION AND TAKING BRIBES AS FAR BACK AS MY MEMORY EXTENDS.IT HAS BEEN SUED SO MANY TIMES BY CITIZENS IT FAILED TO PROTECT THAT WE COULDN'T BEGIN TO LIST ITS FAILURES.

DOES OUR NATIONAL ENVIRONMENT NEED PROTECTING, DO WE?

OF COURSE, BUT THE EPA WILL NEVER DO ITS JOB AND CONGRESS IS ITCHING TO DISMANTLE IT.

AFTER IT'S GONE, IT WILL BE A FREE-FOR-ALL AS NO REGULATIONS, WHETHER ENFORCED OR NOT, WILL BE IN PLACE TO STOP THE GREEDY CORPORATIONS FROM DESTROYING WHAT'S LEFT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS OF NON-PROTECTION BY THE EPA.